And a search shows the Afrika Korps didn't form until 1941, and they used green uniforms for the first few weeks!:

So there you go: artistic licence. But it's intriguing to see how the fans in the post above start to embellish their heroes with a background story to make it all feasible.

The Nazis are the ultimate force to represent evil, and if you're using a Joseph Campbell mythic template for your comic-book hero, and the Ark as the seat of the Divine, you need real self-destruct baddies from the Abyss.

'just goes to show how we suspend disbelief. I'm not even sure most Americans even saw the Nazis as a potential threat back then, enough to send agents anyhow!

Did any of the Indy stories actually take place DURING WWII? Spielberg missed a trick there.

John Hurt (Oxley) said it all when it was asked where the little green men had disappeared to: "the space between spaces," or something like that. Tarentino is familiar with alternative histories in the progression of his storyline ideas - it's like, read between the lines.

The Nazis and the Brits did a lot of to and fro evolutions in the desert war. It came to an end though, at a place called El Alamein, after which it was westward ho all the way to the end of the line in N Africa. See Patton, Lust For Glory for an easy to assimilate end note.